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A Use Case For Crypto Your Mom Will Understand – And Want to Do

TL/DR: Save up to 38% buying stuff from Amazon using crypto and Purse.io. It just works, so do it. Read on for more details and one very important thing (and one sort of important thing) Purse really should make more obvious…

The biggest thing you can do to advance cryptocurrency adoption is give people a reason to use cryptocurency right now. Purse is the best reason I’ve found so far.

You can save 15% on Amazon purchases immediately, and up to 38% on subsequent purchases.

There’s no catch. They have a supply of Amazon gift card holders that want to exchange the cards for crypto and are willing to give a discount (supposedly this is because they were paid in discounted Amazon cards instead of cash themselves).

The only real downside is you have to wait longer for things to ship (the bigger the discount you request, the longer it takes Purse to find a gift card holder willing to accept the discount). Here’s how it works:

Sign up for an account

Shop as you normally would on Amazon, but instead of putting things in your cart, put them in a wish list

Sign into your Purse account

Import your wish list

Choose your discount (you’re limited to 15% for your first purchase), and then

Pay in crypto

BTC and BCH are their native currencies, but you can use others (they use ShapeShift). I chose the maximum for my first purchase (15%) and used BCH for my purchase (so it was quickly confirmed). Items started shipping the next day. Everything was reasonably straightforward, except for one thing:

When you’re shopping, you’ll see your sweet, sweet discount, e.g.:

But when you go to check out, that discount appears to drop, in my case it appeared there was almost no discount at all!

However, this turned out to be a big ‘ol nothingburger. This happened because they figure in a small amount (less than the discount), to account for currency fluctuations. When I first went to use Purse, this amount was big enough that I bailed on the purchase and contacted customer service (who explained it). I went through the process the next day, and everything worked great.

(For some reason this wasn’t clear the first time around)

That was the big thing. The small thing is that I now also have a $13.43 BCH balance in my Purse account from the refunded currency buffer, which is about half of my 15% savings of $26.87. If I was using BTC, this would likely be too little to move due to transfer fees, so expect this.

So, although I saved 15% my first time, half my savings are now in BCH on Purse. Which isn’t that big a deal (because I’ll use it again), but if I had known about this, I would have made a small purchase sooner – then waited until I could get a larger discount later. I’m still happy though, because I’ll be using Purse for all my Amazon purchases from now on.

Once you are eligible for the 38% discount, it even makes sense to buy a couple hundred bucks of crypto with a credit card at a 5% fee, and buy everything you normally would on Amazon through Purse. You’ll still save up to 33% and help drive crypto adoption!